email hosting

bingo600

As a follow on to this line of thinking.

If you self host things not email. Calendars, Contacts, File Sync/Sharing and the like do you open ports or keep it local and only accessible via VPN when not at home?

I'm not exposing to public.
All has to be done via OpenVPN

It can't be hard to connect , the wifey can do it wo. nagging.

Btw: I have a friend that is happy w. proton mail too.

@bingo600 Thanks! I appreciate the advice.

Gertjan

@jwj said in email hosting:

Just really good email hosting.

Gandi, Google, whatever, forget about them. Go for the real thing, as it is free, used by everybody, and it delivers.

Take your own dedicated server / VPS. Install postfix, add 'courier' or 'dovecot' for POPS and IMAPS support. postfix handles already SMTPS. Add your domains, add known certificates (LE comes in handy here).

Add, for example, roundcube, for webmail access.

Forget about GUI ways to handle postfix. Get to know the two files : main.cf and master.cf and your good. postfix is the most documented program on the Internet.
Add some SPF, DKIM and DMARC facilities. Take care of your reverse and your good.

Control incoming mail, control outgoing mail ( ! ), be patient and gmail, hotmail, etc etc (all of them) will accept your mails just fine.

I switched to that "all myself" mail solution for several domain names a decade ago, and I never regretted it.

True, it's not a free solution. The servers has to be rented, as the domain names.

Hosting you own setup means you can try whatever you want : spam detection is an art.

iPhones, Android devices, Office 365, Thunderbird, other mail clients, my setup works with everything.

bingo600

I'm still on sendmail
Never failed me.
But i still think Stallman was on mushrooms when writing the macro language.

Sendmail + dovecot + clamav & "spamhaus checks via sendmail"

Edit:
But i think i'd go w. GertJan's suggestion, if i had to start from scratch.

Or if feeling brave & dockerized ... : https://mailcow.email/

/Bingo

Thanks for all the info. I'm a ways away from being able to fully self host email, dynamic IP... Proton mail may be an interim solution.

I'll take on some lower hanging fruit and revisit self hosted email when it becomes a viable option. One step at a time, reducing the footprint of data scattered on various services. I do this knowing that the privacy issues must be viewed in a larger context. Worrying about where my Amazon emailed receipts live while ignoring the location beacon (Mobile Phone) in my pocket is to miss the point. Not to mention credit cards and facial recognition...

Removing vendor lock-in is just as appealing as any other aspect of this... Signal was nice step in this direction, removing the dependency on Apple's FaceTime and Messages.

DaddyGo

@jwj said in email hosting:

Proton mail may be an interim solution.

Hi,

If you’re in Europe and you’ve already switched to Signal , you might also appreciate this if you pay a little for it.
https://tutanota.com

It has long been reliable and usable.

@daddygo Thank you. Paying is fine. Free is often the problem, yeah? It's never really free....

Gertjan

@jwj said in email hosting:

self host email, dynamic IP.

Self hosting a mail solution : not behind a ISP/SOHO type Internet connection, if your not sure your connection is up 99,99 % of the time. Or been repaired 'fast' if down. The real home show stopper is : ISP IP ranges are very known, and on 'no mail server activity accepted from from them' lists by most big public mail services.
As said above : a small VPS or dedicated server, with one or more static type IP's(4/6)will do just fine.

DaddyGo

@jwj said in email hosting:

Free is often the problem, yeah?

You're absolutely right , let's see....

https://mxtoolbox.com/Public/UpgradeV2.aspx?feature=no-feature-selected&source=pricing

@gertjan Agreed. However, an email outage is not as tragic as it once would have been. I, and I suspect many others, don't see email as critical communications. It's the use of an email address as identity that is troubling. I regularly go days or weeks without sending an email. I do use email addresses multiple times everyday to logon to various services. 2FA is a band-aid at best, security theater most of the time.